As a little girl, I found trust and comfort in the religious women
who swished across my path offering care and compassion. Educators for
the most part, they provided a strength to the structure in a
child's world.

Then the walls came tumbling down.

A religious woman -- a family friend and a summer guest in our home
-- brought the unthinkable into my child's world: the trauma of
sexual abuse. Clothed as one whose heart belonged to God, she hid behind
the veneer of personal concern and practiced pedophilia with terrifying success and typical lack of suspicion.

Well-honed social skills and a life committed to God, community and
ministry belied the dangers lurking just below the surface. When
opportunity appeared in the form of a child, she seized it. The threats
and warnings of male pedophiles to their victims became her message to
me: No one would love me; no one would believe me if I told; she would
do this to my sister if I refused. She manipulated with untiring zeal.

She maintained cordial relationships with my family, played touch
football with us, swam with us, shopped with us. But at night, when the
bedroom door creaked open, she became my tormenter. Her actions violated
the most sacred essence of a person -- physically, sexually, emotionally
and psychologically. And yet, so expertly had she drawn that veil of
secrecy that even repeated attempts to combat it failed: "How
could you say that about sister?! That's a disgusting thought!
How dare you!" And even later, as a young adult, I heard, "No
woman would do that!" -- as if I'd imagined it all.

As a female and a religious, my abuser bore a twofold protection.
The woman-child bond is sacred in our society, and religious are trusted
adults. The reality of a religious woman's practicing pedophilia
was almost too shocking to be believed, much less accepted. Even now,
after sensationalist coverage by the media and recognition from the
church hierarchy, the focus has been on religious males' sexual
deviance with boys, not on religious women's deviance with girls.

Like so many victims, I had to live with the nightmares, be haunted
by the experience. I diminished myself, denied reality, dared not
trust. I found safety in an inner world and tried to live the
contradictions. In an act I now find courageous, I confronted her and
terminated the relationship. I was in my late teens. Her protestations
of genuine care and concern, so characteristic of the pedophile, meant
nothing to me. I had known the fear of her, dreaded the pain of her
indignities and abuses, the extent of her power. I had given up the
search for someone who would believe me.

She continued to visit my family long after I'd left home.
She tracked my movements through my relatives and stopped by during my
own infrequent visits home. My loathing grew. In my late 20s, I could
bear the secret and the silence no longer.

Confrontation brought denial, typical of pedophiles. A twisted
tale of grief emerged. Like so many male pedophiles, she had grown up
in a highly dysfunctional family and suffered severe abuse at the hands
of her own mother. She had abused alcohol and developed other norms of
illness. Her social relationships were a facade, guarding against
genuine intimacy. Her needs for self-gratification left a trail of
tragedy in other lives.

And now, having worked hard at sorting out the puzzle and peering
deeply into my memory, I am amazed at my own need to tell my story. I
see the words and feel the memories and realize with a swell of anger
that I am not the only one. There are other children, other sufferings.

But because there is so little impetus to examine the deviance of
women within our society and church, those children remain invisible,
their suffering unmitigated and unseen. And the acts of deviance remain
a tragedy unexplored. Healing for either the innocent or the abuser
seems a near impossibility under these circumstances. And human
experience remains uncorroborated by sharing, condemning the wounded to
a deeper loneliness.

The wonder and mystery of life is too precious to lose to the
haunting specter of abuse or to the silence that surrounds sexual
deviance. A single voice raised defining a single person's
experience dares the truth to be told. And it invites the healing hand
of Jesus to be raised, begs for the power from him so that the dignity
of our human condition can be restored and the journey toward him can be
continued unencumbered by the cycle of abuse. With God, all things are
possible.

COPYRIGHT 1993 National Catholic Reporter
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.